Ooh boy, here it comes, the closest hurricane to Cape Cod since Bob is a day and a half away. The NWS still can’t say exactly where Earl will go or exactly when, but it looks as if he will come close enough to really shake things up here on Cape Cod, especially on Nantucket. So far folks around here seem fairly relaxed, but it is Thursday AM and the storm isn’t supposed to be here until tomorrow night, so we’ll see what today and tomorrow bring, I’d expect the supermarkets and stores to get busier in the next 24 hours.

What a shame for all the innkeepers and restaurateurs, this is labor day weekend. AAA named Cape Cod as the nations #1
labor day destination, but I think that prediction was made far in advance of Earl heading our way?

What will this do to fishing? Can’t say, surely it will have an effect one way or the other……

Stay tuned.

Which always stands to make you take pause when you feel that colder air for the first time in a long time, you get that sort of icky feeling in your stomach, you are forced to remember that summer is going away.

This cooler weather is probably going to turn the fishing on a bit if it sticks around for a few days. Just at the end of last weeks, limits of bass were landed in places that limits hadn’t been seen or had been rarely seen all season. It’s going to be over faster than we thought, if what I think is correct…….

They come from all over the country to fish for striped bass, commercially, here in Massachusetts. They come from states like R.I. & CT. & N.Y., but they also come from other places like VT., Colorado and I even saw a young guy in a hard bottom zodiac with Maine registration, spearing stripers, this kid had some serious cajones. He was anchored not far from where a friend and I had come to fish, he was already there when we arrived, but he wasn’t quite on the spot, maybe a few hundred feet off, once we started fishing and we caught a few fish, he had been watching us, hanging onto the sides of the boat, he pulled his anchor and moved over and anchored right in the beginning of our drift. When we moved back up the drift, he told us we couldn’t fish there anymore, because he was diving, I laughed my ass off and informed him that if I lost any fish on his anchor line he may be swimming home……A heated verbal exchange began, but in the end, he ended up leaving when I called the coast guard to ask about his antics and about the legallity of spearing striped bass, while I was idling in gear sitting about 20′ away from him.

I’ve written quite a bit about the striper fishery recently and if you have read it then you obviously see a pattern. The striper fishery is a giveaway to 1000 + guys who aren’t even fishermen, almost none fo the particpants who are from out of state are “fishermen”, but they have the boats and they are allowed to get a permit for $30, pretty sweet deal for them, easy fun money playing fisherman for a few weeks, for some of them it’s a lot of money, some of these guys catch a lot of fish. With so many folks catching and selling 500#’s+ a day, the quota can get burned up pretty fast. The prices drop when we are catching a lot, sometimes to less than 2$ a pound, which is what I was selling them for in the 1980’s.

Which brings me to the point, or to a point – I think that it would be a far better “commercial” fishery, if here in MA, we regulated the catch by a limit of pounds and not a number of fish, after all our quota is set in pounds and not in the number of fish, at least in it’s use as the method by which the fishery is limited, even if the catch limit is actually set in a number of fish that are calculated to be the # of pounds our quota works out to be. Before we re-opened striped bass to full blown commercial fishing, we always were allowed to catch and sell 100#’s + 1 fish /day, seven days a week from June till October. You weren’t going to get rich, but you were going to make money, I think it was much better than this derby fishery we have now. I think that Massachusetts fishermen would be far better served with regulations that kept this fishery open longer. This is our fishery here in Massachusetts, it’s our quota, we shouldn’t be selling thirty dollar permits to folks from states where a MA fisherman can’t get a permit and it shouldn’t be sold to folks who see the fishery as a way to make a bunch of easy money in a few weeks and also get out of paying sales and excise taxes too.

It’s a matter of what is right for the guys here in the state, whats best for them to actually earn a living.
The DMF is on the side of the part time guys, they don’t say so much, but their actions say so. They won’t even discuss limiting entry to the fishery and especially won’t discuss making residency a requirement, even though they’ve been presented the idea of limiting a non resident to whatever the state they are from would limit our guys to if we could get a permit there and if we couldn’t get a permit ther or their state had no fishery, limiting them to 2 fish, which is the default recreational limit, which prevents us from ahving denied them exactly what they would allow us or in some cases, more. It’s ridiculous, we are supposed to have reciprocation between the states in the fisheries, but we don’t. But, with the folks in charge here now, unless we can bring pressure on them form above, this won’t change.

We need a new governor and we need some fresh faces at the DMF.

How’s your summer going? Mine had been going fairly well despite the low fluke prices and awful hot weather, then it became August. Seems as if the fluke have gotten lock jaw or worse yet have already began to leave?
The bass fishing is still dismal and doesn’t seem to have any improvement in sight and I hear there’s a tropical depression headed past Bermuda that is packing 60 mph winds…..oh joy. What can you do? I think I’m gonna go bass’n tomorrow, but not where I’ve been going, that’s for sure. I won’t say where, except that I hear they’ve been catching fish there.

Scup and sea bass are open, though I don’t see the sea bass being open past this week, I don’t know why they even bothered to open it at all, 50 pounds is not even worth catching, unless you are scupping, which I am not.

My back is aching form the ride in y’day. The winds are even stronger this AM than they were y’day, so I have taken the day off, plenty to fix here on land, trailer light needs a bulb, one of my reels needs some tlc and I need to figure out why my navigation lights aren’t coming on?

I certainly hope that the weather next week is going to be a little more favorable…..

When Mitt Romney was our governor, I wrote him a letter. It wasn’t a nice letter. It was a letter expressing my utter and total disaproval of the crfeation of a cod conservation zone and the closure of a productive fishing area, which was as I still assert, closed to quell criticism from NMFS over wasteful fishing that was occurring in the area, I cited where Mr. Diodati had been quoted saying this and that and such etc etc etc, it was scathing and detailed, I had gone to the law library and with the assistance of a very clever librarian, gotten the DMF to fax a copy of what had been filed, even though it wasn’t yet available via the Massachusetts Register. I knew what I was talking about, I was right aaaand I was really pissed off.
What I got soon after, was pretty funny. I received a letter from Paul Diodati, director MA DMF, it went something along the lines of – “Dear Mr. Rice, thanks for your recent letter to gov. Romney (I chuckled as I read it), as steward of MA living marine resources…….I laughed harder. I write the one man in the state who can and could absolutey do something about this and what does he do? He refers me to the one person who is doing what I am complaining about…….Let’s make sure that Mitt never becomes president.

As things stand right now, despite the fact that some of our inshore resources abundance is there, we either can’t catch enough, or the fishery has been nearly privatized through discriminatory regulations, not a lot in between. Our DMF administration seems as if they couldn’t care less about most of it, our Commissioner of fish and wildlife, Mary Griffin doesn’t seem interested either. Now, in all honesty, I can’t say that I know this for a fact, but, I am going to guess that Deval Patrick couldn’t care less either. You see the problem?
I am concerned that Tim Cahill is going to be our Ross Perot…….

I hate politics, but I know that sticking my head in the sand is worse than not knowing what is going on.

We need a governor who will acknowledge the importance of a local inshore fishery and act that way, fairly simple. Most of what we are suffering from in Massachusetts is from an administration that acts and reacts at a snails pace and almost always results in failure of some sort. This DMF makes things take years that should only take months, they can afford to take their time, they get payed regardless of whether our states fishermen are catching fish and making money or not. Seeing this over the years is slow motion madness.

Nice up here in NH, just hanging out. Sometimes I don’t want to go back to all the BS, but don’t all of us?
I try and I try to get folks motivated to speak up on their own behalf and to unite as well towards a better system of regulations, but it seems that the DMF is on the same schedule as the rest of them…..too slow.

Why, I don’t know, but, I still actually love my job. My mornings are awesome, nobody else in sight for most of the early AM, but inevitably toward mid morning, someone always manages to become my new best friend, they’ll be running by, close enough to see what I am doing and they see fluke jumping over the side of my boat, so they turn straight for me, pause and then proceed to follow me around for a while, trying, almost always in vain, to replicate what I am doing. It’s actually rather comical sometimes. Some folks try to act as if they just happen to be here coincidentally, others are just totally blatant about it and some actually try to short drift me, which is the funniest of all…… Like I said in a post months ago, this is my life every day for 20 years and it’s really amusing when these guys come along and try to be me for a few hours and you can see they get frustrated when they can’t do it. It doesn’t matter how fancy their boat is, (usually the fancier the worse they are at it…) you can’t buy experience. But, they all try anyway.

So, after I get to deal with a few of these zipperheads towards the middle and often the rest of my day, I then get to return to the harbor. What had been a quiet and peaceful place when I left before has turned into a zoo. If I am lucky, there isn’t anyone in front of me at the ramp, if I’m not it can be a half an hour in the hot sun waiting for them. I usually go up to the truck and sit in the AC till it’s my turn…I wish folks could get it that there are two lanes to the ramp and if the knew what they were doing we could launch/load two boats at a time, but they don’t and we can’t. The after my turn comes and I’m out of the water, I get to drive from Falmouth back to Yarmouth, usually with some jerk, often a young’sh female with a cell phone growing out of here ear, about 3 inches of my transom, I always double check my trailer lights each and every time just before I get in the truck………..and my wife wonders why I drink.

That’s how much we are going to be “allowed” to take as of August 1’st……oh boy!

In their infinite wisdom, our DMF has yet again let the potters blow our quota and again we have no summer fishery. Why on earth do the (DMF) think they are best serving us by letting 30 or so potters steal as much as they can every spring, only to give the fish away for less than 1/2 what they are worth in the summer, BRILLIANT HUH? Ironically, at 20 fish/day 7days/week, a recreational fisher can take more.

Anyhow, unless you’ve been hiding in your basement all summer, you know how hot it’s been and how poor the fishing has been. 3 weeks into bass season and we are only at 26% of the quota. Unfortunately the hot weather has kept the fish places we aren’t allowed to catch them. Also and perhaps even more unfortunately, the lack of fish in nearshore waters will serve to bolster the position of those assholes known as Stripers Forever and their ASSertion that the bass stocks are in trouble, which the rest of us back here on planet earth know is not true. In addition to the lack of fish, the very folks who the bassholes are complaining about, (part timers) are doing whatever they can to catch stripers, legally or illegally, guys from R.I. are catching fish out at Block Island and landing them in Westport and the ratpack in Menemsha has started doing the same thing, hitting Block after dark and returning before sunrise. With fishing as poor as it is, anyone and I mean anyone bringing 30 fish back to the dock, especially 30 big fish, is more likely than not doing something they shouldn’t.

About the little striper gang down in Menemsha – they have become a menace. To these kids, stripers are like crack and there is no line the wont cross to catch them, heaven help you if you find some fish and the see you or find out, they’ll surround you and chum the fish away from you and they just don’t care who you are. When the docks burned down there I really hoped all their boats went with it, but they didn’t. Maybe the fuel docks will get struck by lightning……one can only hope.

I have only been bass fishing once, that was enough to convince me to stay fluking, which has also been slow, but seems to have picked up in the last week. I like it when it’s on the slow side, I almost always get my limit, but with bass open and the fluking slow, I’m almost alone everywhere I go, sort of like I used to be when we had a fall sea bass fishery, which I fear we will never see again.

Supposedly the weather is going to break today. I still don’t think it will improve the striper fishing much though. Personally I am going to start looking fo a raft and a survival suit so I can go tuna fishing in September……I’m certainly not looking to go bassing anytime soon – between the lack of fish and the little jerks down island , no thanks.

Thursday AM is the start of the directed season for summer flounder.

I tried to get the hook limit bumped up to 300 # (back up that is…) for this year, but the DMF told me I was too late getting my petition to them to get it in place this year. DMF says that they will take this to public hearing this summer, though I still haven’t heard a thing about it. I know, I know, I’ve been beating this horse a long time.

Anyhow, I haven’t been near the water since May 17′th, (thanks MA DMF) since sea bass closed, so I have absolutely no idea what to expect. I’m not ebven sure if I am going Thursday or not, I think it is supposed to rain and I’m not all that excited about looking for fish in a cold rain. There was a time when I’d already have been out several times looking around, scouting out a good spot to get started come opening day, but for whatever reason, this year I just don’t care.

I guess I’d feel differntly towards the fishery if we were back at 300#, but we aren’t yet, so it really bums me out starting off every spring as a second class citizen, so to speak. I’m holding out hope that we will be getting a new governor this fall, one who will listen to our concerns for the direction MA DMF has taken us with our state waters fisheries and who will either help us get things back by pressuring the Administration @ DMF or replace them. I intend to organize a diverse contingent of guys who are also dis-satisfied with our place in the fisheries and meet with DMF to discuss our concerns, especially in the black sea bass and summer flounder fisheries, both of which are “restored” as called for by the Magnuson Stevens act and will be seeing bigger quotas in years to come. With these fisheries restored, we want our share of the landings put back to equal with the other gears, especially in the BSB fishery, which is still out of control with the potters stealing as many fish as they can despited being able to land 2 1/2 times what the other guys can and even though the DMF knows all about it and even knows exactly who is doing what, they do nothing, nothing at all.

Ok that’s it – I’ve ranted enough this AM and I am still in a good mood, so I’ll just leave it there.

Are why I don’t want to fish for blues anymore. But plenty of guys still do, in fact it seems as if more than ever are and at around a buck a pound, I can see why. Used to be that 50 cents was a great price for blues on the spring run, but over the last ten years, the price has doubled and there’s no lack of fish either. It’s all hook and line fishing from skiffs, cheap to do and profitable if you want to put in a long day casting plugs and reeling them in. Some folks are getting 500# in a day, alone, more if there are two guys on the boat.

The blues seem to be arriving sooner each spring. This year I know for a fact they were here as early as 4/27, but it doesn’t surprise me with the weather we had then, but what does surprise me is that they are arriving in numbers before the scup and sea bass. Are they getting acclimated to the colder water? Whatever the reason for their premature appearance, it has certainly changed the dynamics of the spring fishery. I have absolutely become convinced that the early bluefish arrival is the most likely cause of our horrible early run of squid inshore the last 5 or so years. With little or no squid inshore, there are less fish that depend on squid for food around inshore, like big bass along the beaches and early big fluke, which were both abundant until recent years.

The $50K question is, why are the blues arriving earlier? A popular and simple answer could be global warming, except for it being so cold in the spring, so that doesn’t really work, the water temps haven’t been averaging any warmer now than they had been. Bluefish are on a 30 year cycle, so they say, so perhaps there are just a lot more of them now than there were ten years ago, although it doesn’t seem so from my on the water experience, it only seems as if there are more earlier. So why are they here so early? The water close to shore is warmer than the water they have to swim through to get to it, so it’s understandable that they will hang close to shore, especially when it’s sunny, but what makes them want to swim through 47-49 degree water to get there? Whatever the reason, May 1 blues have become “normal” and things have changed along the S side of Cape Cod because of it.

Ok, it wasn’t the weather. It was beautiful last week, in fact. I got a little hopeful back around April 23′d, when I went down to the docks in Hyannis and there were a couple of big out of town boats there, 1 from Montauk and another from Pt Jude, I was hoping they knew something we didn’t yet….. Boy what a waste of fuel for them that first week, eh? There just weren’t any number of squid inside, despite the warm weather.

Bluefish arrived during the last week of April, perhaps providing just enough of a threat to keep any numbers from setting up inside for a love fest? This spring is the third year in a row where there have been virtually no squid in the sound. The weirs haven’t gotten any this year that I am aware of and I think that the top trip for the week inside for the draggers was 4,000 pounds, which is what some boats would make in 1 tow in previous years.

On to a 6 day sea bass season…….

Why can’t we have the last 3 weeks weather for the next 3 weeks? The water in Nantucket Sound is like 48 degrees already, 2 more and that’s squid water……but, if it stays cold, we are gonna play hurry up and wait.

Fluke petition update- apparently, I didn’t submit my petition soon enough (FEB), so….no more fluke for us this year, but it is supposedly going to public hearing this summer. I don’t know, I think having submitted the petition in Feb. was plenty of time for them to do it. Just more excuses to keep the hook guys down……

I have requested a meeting with Diodati this summer to discuss the inequities in our landing limits, lets see if he pounds the table with his fist’s this time………